The Wild Truth Read online

  Of all his children, Shelly seemed to revere our father the most—though that reverence could quickly turn to fury. Outside, near the Pounders’ flower garden, I overheard her telling Chris about how she used to sit in an open window at their Colorado home for hours on end, looking out at a flower bed of marigolds and waiting for Dad to visit on a day he’d promised he would. Dad wouldn’t show up, so she came to hate the sight of marigolds. She demonstrated her dislike of the flowers by picking one from the soil, plucking off its head, and grinding it into the patio, the orange and red petals staining the concrete in a fiery display. Chris made his own pattern with another bloom, for good measure.

  The casting was complete. Everyone knew their place; everyone had been given their lines. Eight children were extras in the show, with limited access to the script. We would all have to unravel the mystery in our own time. The foundation was set for a lengthy spectacle that sharply contradicted the truth.

  CHAPTER 2

  SAINT MATTHEW’S United Methodist Church was just three miles from Willet Drive. A quick drive on a rushed Sunday morning, but a long walk for a nine-year-old and a twelve-year-old.

  “Look at this, Carine!” Chris exclaimed with outstretched arms. “If we were in the car, we’d pass by all these colorful leaves too fast, and all we’d smell would be Dad’s cigarettes!”

  I was well aware that the change of season made Chris’s allergies unbearable, and I appreciated him putting a positive spin on the situation for me. Though it was only nine A.M., it had already been a long day.

  Chris had been the first to hear the yelling that morning and had come into my room to rouse me.

  “Carine, wake up, quick!” he whispered, pulling the covers off me.

  “What? What time is it?” I asked, still half asleep.

  “Hurry. Come into my room.”

  He led me by the hand as I stumbled out of bed, several stuffed animals falling to the floor, along with my comforter. As we snuck from my bedroom door to his, the shouting from below electrified the air in the hallway and stung my still groggy senses.

  “We’re supposed to leave for church in an hour. I don’t think they’re going,” Chris said. “You stay here.” He nodded toward his bed. “I’ll grab us some breakfast.”

  “No, don’t go down there,” I warned. “I’m not that hungry.”

  “It’s okay,” he assured me. “They’re working on something. They’ll stay in the basement. I’ll be right back.” He returned shortly with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a couple of Cokes. As we sat on his bed and ate, we tried to determine the subject of today’s clash. Something about Dad not respecting Mom’s contribution to some proposal that was due the next day. They were working against a deadline, and that meant today’s fighting would remain contained, at least until the work was finished.

  “Fuck you!” Mom yelled as she slammed the office door shut and stomped up to the laundry room. As we heard the washing machine begin to assault another load, she returned to the basement, and on it went.

  This Sunday morning was slightly unusual in that conflicts were typically suppressed until the hostility boiled over onto the breakfast table. Then a temporary ceasefire would be called in time for us to trade pajamas for church clothes and march out into the backyard for pictures in our prim costumes. “Smile! Now!”

  Chris and I always dutifully donned our disguises as the perfect little kids in the perfect family. In these childhood photographs, Chris looked like a tiny gentleman. His suit was ironed and starched, his hair neatly combed. Only his defiant stare threatened to expose the truth. I, on the other hand, in frilly dresses and bows, wore the smile my father demanded.

  “Go get dressed and meet me at the front door,” Chris instructed. I knew without asking him that my brother and I were still going to church.

  When I came down the steps, I saw him waiting for me, holding my jacket. “Here, it’s cold,” he said, tossing it to me.

  We knew the route well. As we went past our neighbors’ peaceful homes on Willet, all we saw were people walking their dogs or raking leaves. But as we neared the church, we saw other families that were also headed to Saint Matthew’s.

  We sat in the Sunday school classes our parents used to teach, listening to the new teacher talk about God. Then we made our way into the church, greeting Reverend Smith on the way in. After he shook our hands, he looked around expectantly for our parents. But before he was able to quiz us on where they were, the next person in line shook his hand and Chris and I rushed in to take our seats.

  We felt safe standing amongst the congregation. It was familiar and right. We sang “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Rock of Ages,” the warmth of the lyrics wrapping around us as we watched our fellow acolytes light the candles on the altar. The room smelled like Pine-Sol and flowers, but mostly like the perfume of all the women who wore too much. We sat quietly and listened to Reverend Smith sermonize about the will of God and the truth and peaceful beauty realized in a life that served Him.

  Reverend Smith always looked to me like he was surrounded by a holy glow. I thought a lot about his description of God and what that God had to do with me. It was always an odd concept. Was God like the reverend described? I imagined an ethereal being with a long beard, a white light, a warm presence. Or was God like the Wizard of Oz, all-powerful and good, so long as you didn’t cross him? Or was I supposed to fear God? Was he like my dad, who liked to invoke His name when he wanted me, Chris, and Mom to never question him? “I am God!” he would shout. “Nothing I say or do can be wrong!”

  I looked over at Chris, who looked as serious as he always did in church. I knew that, like me, he was enchanted by the idea of a Father’s pure and unconditional love existing somewhere outside of our reality. We talked broadly about what we believed in, and sometimes spirituality hit home in a more personal way. There was the night Mom had told us that Uncle Phil had died. Uncle Phil wasn’t technically our uncle but the husband of Ewie, a woman who’d been like a grandma to us. Uncle Phil was kind and sweet, and always showed us funny magic tricks. His was my first experience with death. The night we learned about Uncle Phil, Chris saw I was sad and let me curl up with him. We lay in his bed and compared our visions of heaven and the angels, wondering what Uncle Phil might be doing up there with God and if God liked quarters being pulled out of his ears or cards that somehow appeared and disappeared. I held a pint-size bucket of green slime in my hands, and I turned the rigid container around, trying to look introspective.

  “What are you doing with that?” Chris had asked.

  “Uncle Phil gave this to me,” I said.

  “It’s not about the things he gave us, Carine,” he said softly. “It’s about the memories. You can’t touch those with your hands. Everything you can touch with your hands is just stuff.”

  Sitting on the wooden pew with Chris in church, I wondered if he was right. We accepted Communion when it was passed around, and as the dry bite of bread and the sweet grape juice touched my tongue, I thought, Well, these are also things, but they have great meaning.

  After services were complete, we made our way down to the social hall. As we passed by the membership portraits lining the hallway, I saw my family as other members must have seen us in our Olan Mills special: cute and smiling kids, happy parents, the perfect Christmas-card family.

  We looked, I thought, like Denise Barker’s family. Denise was my best friend and lived just down the street from us. It was during after-school playtime and sleepovers at her house that I realized what was happening at mine perhaps wasn’t that normal and probably not okay. Her house was always immaculate, like mine, but quiet. I didn’t really comprehend how boisterous my personality was until Denise’s very sweet and reserved mother had to warn me on several occasions that if I did not lower my volume, she would have no choice but to send me back home. Denise and I would retreat to her room, doing our best to refrain from giggling. She had two older brothers who played a lot of soccer, and Denise t
ook piano lessons. They went to church every Sunday as a family and they prayed before every meal, even if it was McDonald’s Mondays. Denise’s dad was a highly educated engineer who worked in a similar field as my dad, and they crossed professional paths from time to time. I wondered what Denise’s dad thought of mine—if he assumed my dad was as stellar a husband and father as he was a scientist. Whenever I saw Mr. Barker disciplining his children, I was struck by how rational and even-tempered he was. His face changed from its amiable norm to something stern yet not threatening. He actually had a conversation with his children and listened when they replied. And they weren’t afraid to reply. It was completely foreign to me. I reeled in my gregarious behavior and spent as much time as possible at Denise’s house. I’m sure her parents didn’t have a perfect marriage. But I never heard them say a cross word to each other, nor about the other to any of their children. Most noticeable to me was the way her parents looked at each other; I realized what genuine admiration, respect, and kindness were supposed to look like. They had a perceptible pride in what they were fostering within their family and accomplishing together through their children.

  Chris and I finally arrived in the social hall to the smell of Krispy Kreme donuts—my favorite part of church. Chris handed me two dimes, as my mother usually did. I plunked them into the green plastic basket and retrieved one cinnamon and one powdered from the boxes of sweet deliciousness. As I alternated a bite of one donut with a bite of the other, to achieve the perfect combination, I heard other parents asking Chris where ours were.

  “Oh, we came with friends today,” he answered to one. “They’re out of town; we’re here with neighbors,” he told another. They smiled at us and said, “Well, give your parents our love.”

  We put on our coats and began to make our way home.

  “Do you want to cut through the woods?” Chris asked. I did. Taking the detour on the way home would keep us away a bit longer. Plus, Chris always cheered up when we were in the woods; he loved nothing more than when our family hiked in the Shenandoah, and he often provided captions to the scenery, as if he were preparing an image for National Geographic magazine. Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn’t seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, “See, Carine? That’s the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you.”

  Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lives the better. While it was unusual for a solid week to pass without my parents having an argument that sent them into a negative tailspin of destruction and despair, they never got into a fight of any consequence when we were on an extended family hike or camping trip. It seemed like everything became centered and peaceful when there was no choice but to make nature the focus. Our parents’ attention went to watching for blaze marks on trees; staying on the correct trail; doling out bug spray, granola bars, sandwiches, and candy bars at proper intervals; and finding the best place to pitch the tent before nightfall. They taught us how to properly lace up our hiking boots and wear the right socks to keep our feet healthy and reliable. They showed us which leaves were safe to use as toilet paper and which would surely make us miserable downtrail. We learned how to purify water for our canteens if we hadn’t found a safe spring and to be smart about conserving what clean water we had left.

  At night we would collect rocks to make a fire ring, dry wood to burn, and long twigs for roasting marshmallows for the s’more fixings Mom always carried in her pack. Dad would sing silly, nonsensical songs that made us laugh and tell us about the stars. “Come on, Dad,” I’d say. “With all you know about space, you have to know if there are aliens. Are there? Tell me, please!” Dad would grin mysteriously and dodge the question. “Space is vast, Carine. We’ve only been able to explore a tiny part of it. Maybe they do exist; maybe they don’t. Maybe they live among us and we don’t even know it!”

  Later, in our tent, Chris and I would curl up in our hunter-green and navy-blue sleeping bags, the soft linings covered with pictures of mallard ducks. On particularly cold nights we’d zip them together, and Chris would whisper, “Carine! Shhh. Listen . . . I’m pretty sure there’s an alien outside our tent.” Depending on my mood, and on the level of noise in the forest, I would either panic or laugh.

  Though the wooded grove shortcut from church was nothing like the Shenandoah, Chris made the most of it. He told me about all the different trees, and we collected leaves that had fallen from each. We looked for the empty shells of the cicadas that had sung to us all summer. The bugs always climbed up the trees before shedding their skin for a new life. We loved to spot their old armor piled up on the ground, no sign of the cicadas in sight.

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, Dad went away on business. He was gone for several days and it was like the house’s vibrato changed frequency, lowering until it could barely be felt at all. We made chocolate chip cookies with Mom, and I snuck bites of the dough even though she warned me I’d get worms.

  “After the cookies are done baking,” Mom announced, “we’re going to go on a drive and do a little house hunting.”

  “What’s house hunting?” I asked.

  “We’re going to find a place for the three of us to live.”

  “Not Dad?” Chris asked.

  “No, not Dad. Just the three of us. I’m going to get us out of here. We shouldn’t have to live like this anymore.”

  Chris and I exchanged a wide-eyed look. Finally! we thought, but neither of us dared say it.

  “I’ve been to see an attorney,” Mom continued. “I’m going to leave your father.”

  Warm cookies in hand, we climbed into the Suburban and drove around town, eager to spot FOR RENT signs in front of smaller houses on streets that were just far enough away. Chris sat in the front, wrote down the phone numbers, and talked about his friends who lived near one place or the other.

  “Look, Mom, that one has a swing set!” I pointed.

  “That one has a basketball hoop!” Chris said when we passed another.

  “Look at that flower bed,” Mom said, shaking her head. “What a travesty. I could put some petunias in there and brighten it right up.” In front of the next house, she said, “I know this one doesn’t look like much, but imagine the potential! All it needs is a fresh coat of paint on the windows, doors, maybe the shutters. It’ll come to life and we’ll have gotten it for a bargain.”

  She looked stronger with every mile we traveled. Her eyes and shoulders lifted and her voice had an exhilaration to it as she told us about her meeting with her attorney, Doreen Jones.

  When we got home, Chris organized his army men so they’d be easy to pack up, and I organized my stuffed animals. The notepad of rental phone numbers sat next to the phone, with Mom’s notations about whom she’d left a message for. When Dad returned, Mom told him she was divorcing him, that the three of us were moving out. A massive fight ensued, one in which Dad beat Mom down even more with his words than with his hands: “You’re stupid, Billie! You don’t even have a college degree. I can see to it that you can’t get a good job, and there’s no way you can take care of those kids on your own!” He peeled away her strengths until all her insecurities were exposed. Then came the salt in the sugar jar. He gave Mom an expensive token from his trip, and all was forgotten.

  The next time Dad left, we went house hunting again. And the time after that. Doreen says this and Doreen says that—Mom would chirp about her most recent meeting with the attorney. With each trip, Chris took less interest in writing down the phone numbers of rentals, until he stopped bringing a notepad altogether.

  Occasionally I lost patience with my mom’s unwill
ingness to leave Dad. I’d pack my little red vinyl suitcase with essentials, like my favorite pajamas and stuffed animals, throw in a couple of Pop-Tarts, and announce I was leaving. I’d get as far as the end of the street before realizing that no one was coming after me. I’d return to the house, but instead of going inside, I would climb into the Suburban and lie down until someone came out to retrieve me. “If I could drive,” I contended, “I’d be out of here.”

  Sometimes Mom kept her resolve to divorce Dad longer, and Chris and I were summoned for a sit-down with both parents to discuss important matters. “You each need to say who you want to live with. And we need to know that right now,” they’d say. To answer correctly was impossible. The chosen parent would look smugly at the other in victory, while the odd one out would scream at Chris and me for being so cruel and unappreciative of all that they had sacrificed on our behalf. This summons to appear and decide came frequently, always with the same outcome.

  But when we were older and the divorce bomb was launched into the air, we caught it and kept it alive, tossing it around and examining aloud with our parents what a great idea we thought it was, daring them to finally follow through with it and bring the relief of an explosion. All the while, the house hunting continued. In time, Chris and I viewed the drives around town as just that: drives. And when we were old enough to stay home alone, we declined to get in the Suburban at all.